Greg Bird Will Be a Twitter Star

More often that not professional athletes do not make for the best follows on Twitter.

What they tend to put out is cliche-heavy statements in support of teammates and some thinly-veiled sponsored stuff. This isn’t to say that athletes are boring human beings, they just have a lot more to lose than to gain by putting themselves out there on social media and what we see reflects that reality.

However, Mr. Greg Bird is a different story. Coming off a fantastic 46-game debut with the New York Yankees in 2015 he decided to join the Twitterverse and he’s taken to it like a fish to water. It’s worth mentioning that there were a lot of aviary puns available there and I summoned the strength to resist them.

Anyway, it’s very difficult to predict whether Bird will be a star on the field because baseball is tough to forecast and if anyone could do it perfectly they would have a nicer apartment than I do. They’d probably even be a home owner.

Social media is a little easier though, and based on the 23-year-old’s first 148 offerings I’m willing to state unequivocally that we will be a star on Twitter.

Before Bird even issued his first Tweet he had two built-in advantages to help him become an icon of his generation.

1) He plays for the New York Yankees who play in a very large city, have a storied history, and possess a legion of fans who can be found just about anywhere. The quality of some of these fans, especially outside of New York, can be suspect, but the quantity is undeniable.

2) His last name is Bird. That’s a comic gold mine oozing with elegant simplicity.

Bird’s Twitter career got off to a promising start on December 2 when presented a quick 11-Tweet illustrated biography. The abridged version is below:

Since then he’s branched out significantly from random observations, to emoji-heavy travel updates, to musings on food. In recent weeks he’s touched on topics such as Battlefrog commercials, automatic soap dispensers, and his undying love for Chipotle.

However, the strongest work he’s done on social media has been tweeting on the topic of birds, making him a good follower for bird enthusiasts and baseball fans alike. Here are a couple of prime examples:

The sample size is small, but according to my exceedingly unofficial count, only 20 of his Tweets registered under the umbrella of “Boring Athlete Things,” meaning that Bird is Tweeting about things fans might actually find fun with remarkable consistency.

So far, the young first baseman has shown he’s willing and able to dig deep on bird jokes, his emoji tool is a 50 right now, and he’s thinking about things other than baseball. We are only 148 Tweets into his career, so a level-headed analyst would call for caution, but I’m willing to proclaim him a future star with a great degree of confidence.

Bird’s quest to achieve stardom on the field is complex and he has a number of roadblocks ahead of him, but on Twitter he’s free to be that homegrown star Yankees fans have long been clamoring for.

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1 comment on “Greg Bird Will Be a Twitter Star”

BobCastle

I have been a Yankee Fan since about 1948 and it is great to see a young man who is so well grounded. I hope you will be able to maintain that throughout your career (tough job). I hope that you end up being one of the ones that can be a a career Yankee. Good Luck.